Friday, October 14, 2005

Bird flu and watchers

I guess that soon the Manchurian cranes will be stopping here on their way south for the winter. They are magnificient birds with great coloration. I don'thave any experience with ostriches but the cranes seemed as big as ostriches, although much slighter. They flew in 'V's and their huge wings semed prehistoric.

Sadly, I cannot recommend you go to Cheorwon to see them.

From the Joongang:

October 12, 2005 ㅡ Koreans will begin to go
bird-watching later this month, but government officials would just as soon they
stayed home and rented a DVD.Festivals celebrating the southward migration of
ducks, geese and other fowl will go on almost as usual, despite official fears
about the danger of avian influenza in the feathered flocks that will soon begin
passing through the nation.

...

Gangwon province, where about 100,000 migratory birds visit each winter, will monitor migratory bird droppings on flyways there.


1 comment:

kwandongbrian said...

Laurel,

Your comment on the media is interesting and I really hadn't noticed - or my curiousity was coming from another direction.

First, I notice that the two main english papers the Korea Herald and the Korea Times are written for tourists. Some politics make it in but reading these papers, you would think nothing bad ever happens here.

Although not an American, I notice that a lot of the article have some anti-American bias; fact-checking is noticably absent when articles dealing with Americans are written.